Iran's Expanding War Strategy

Fox News, September 18, 2007

Shortly after
his IRGC-engineered win, Ahmadinejad, a former senior IRGC
commander, vowed to “spread the Islamic Revolution
throughout the world.” With the full blessing of Khamenei,
he staffed the top tiers of his cabinet and diplomatic corps
with veteran IRGC commanders. Today, nearly one-third of the
parliament is comprised of IRGC members.

The political
rise of the IRGC reflects Ayatollah Khamenei’s strategic
calculation that backing down in the nuclear standoff and in
Iraq would jeopardize the survival of the theocratic regime.
He said as much last year: “Any retreat [in the nuclear
field] will open the way for a series of endless pressure
and never-ending back downs.”

This was not a
slip of the tongue. In October 2005, the chief nuclear
negotiator, Ali Larijani, declared that “This is a war. If
we take a step back today, tomorrow they will bring up the
issue of human rights, and the day after they will bring up
the issue of Hezbollah, and then democracy, and other
matters.”

Two years on,
the IRGC has taken full control of the nuclear program and
has evolved into the most powerful financial conglomerate in
Iran. Moreover, through a mesh of front companies and
affiliated civilian firms, the Guards Corps has been
importing nuclear-related technology and material in direct
violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747,
which explicitly forbid such transactions.

According to
documents obtained by this author from his sources
associated with the main opposition inside Iran, i.e. the
Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian Ministry of Defense
(MOD) has authorized the import of goods to the Aerospace
Industries Organization (AIO). The AIO is a military
installation run by the IRGC that manufactures missiles, and
some of its subordinates, as well as its executive director,
are among the entities sanctioned in the UN resolutions.

One of the
documents, dated March 7, 2007, is a directive from the
AIO’s Executive Director, IRGC Brigadier General Ahmad Vahid
Dastjerdi, to the Iranian Customs Office. In it, he lists 28
officials of the MOD who are authorized to release imported
goods to entities listed. Moreover, on April 21, 2007, a
shipment of 108 containers for MOD arrived from China at
Iran’s Chabahar Port. The shipment was labeled as “highly
classified.”

In Iraq, where
Tehran aims to establish a client state, the IRGC’s elite
Qods Force is leading the ayatollahs’ destabilization
campaign. This author has obtained the detailed list of
nearly 32,000 Iraqis, inside and outside of Nouri Al-Maliki’s
government, who are on the payroll of the IRGC.

On the
financial front, several huge no-bid energy contracts have
been given to IRGC-owned companies totaling billions of
dollars. These include a $3 billion contract for the IRGC’s
Khatam al-Anbia headquarters to expand the southern Pars gas
field. The Sadra Company, a major firm owned by the Guards,
has obtained contracts to build several oil shipyards in
Venezuela.

And long before
getting into the business of exporting terrorism and
developing weapons of mass destruction, the IRGC was busy
killing and suppressing Iranians. The primary task of the
IRGC and its Bassij forces is to shield the theocracy
against growing opposition and to quash uprisings of a
restive population.

The terror
designation of the IRGC would go a long way in impeding the
clerical regime’s rogue behavior at home and abroad. More
importantly, it will send a long overdue signal to the
Iranian people that the United States stands with them and
their resistance against the IRGC-protected ruling tyranny.

In its
September 16 issue, The New York Times
reported that while many in the administration are pushing
to blacklist the entire IRGC, “officials at the State and
Treasury Departments have been pushing a narrower approach
that would list only the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds
[Qods] Force, or perhaps, only companies and organizations
with financial ties to that group.”

If true, this
“narrower” designation would weaken the political message
Washington intends to send to Tehran's rulers who in fact
thrive on display of weakness. It would also signal to
Iranians that, despite the lip-service paid to its
relentless pursuit of democracy, Washington refuses to
blacklist the entire IRGC which is most responsible for the
ayatollahs’ bloody grip on power.

If the
terrorist designation would only be limited to the Qods
Force, then the IRGC's nuclear weapons operations, its
financial institutions, much of its terror operations in
Lebanon and elsewhere, as well as its domestic repression
would remain intact and unharmed.

Such policy
recommendations, dominated by an inordinate appetite for
keeping the illusionary doors of negotiation open with the
mullahs, inevitably encourages more belligerence from
Tehran.

Ironically,
while the State Department in successive U.S.
administrations and in what can only be described as a
Chamberlainesque appeasement of ruling tyrants in Iran, has
turned a blind eye to the terrorism of the IRGC, it has
named the democratic opposition, including the MEK as
terrorist.

Two years ago,
President George W. Bush stated that “democratic dissidents
of today are the democratic leaders of tomorrow.” Branding
the IRGC as terrorist and revoking the terror designation of
Iran's democratic dissidents is a first and necessary step
to empowering the democratic leaders of tomorrow's Iran.

Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX
News Channel Foreign Affairs Analyst and the author of "The
Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear
Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Jafarzadeh has revealed
Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and its terror training
camps since 2003. He first disclosed the existence of the
Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water
facility in August 2002.

Prior to becoming a
contributor for FOX, and until August 2003, Jafarzadeh acted
for a dozen years as the chief congressional liaison and
media spokesman for the U.S. representative office of Iran's
parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of
Iran.

The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis by
Alireza Jafarzadeh